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| photo by Robert Clark used with permission of National Geographic |
This week I picked up the February edition of National Geographic magazine while traveling. There is a fascinating article that discusses the evolution of feathers, even calling birds "dinosaurs using feathers to fly". The article is written by Carl Zimmer with photos by Robert Clark. There are artistic renderings of the dinosaurs and what their early feathers might have looked like. I thought it was pretty cool to see how they are using new technology to determine from feather fossils what colors the feathers would have been. The article is really great and I spent most of my flight between Phoenix and Salt Lake studying it. You can read the article
here and check out some of the photos
here. To get the best experience, pick up the February 2011 edition at your local newstand or subscribe to NatGeo
here for just $15/year.
* No compensation was given me to promote this article. NatGeo did ask me to help promote it and I did try to get some free junk, but didn't. The article was interesting and worth sharing!*
That was an interesting article
ReplyDelete@Sarah Knight - thanks for visiting Birding is Fun! I guess my childhood fascination with dinosaurs never really went away. Its so cool that we are still discovering things about them.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately Zimmer is a long way not just from the truth but from science itself.
ReplyDeleteHe's right about alligators' ancestors having feathers, but wrong in just about everything else.
Here's my detailed critique:
http://sciencepolice2010.com/2011/02/04/oh-what-a-tangled-web-he-weaves/
Strangetruther